Jonathan’s National Conference, A Joker -Buhari

Former Military Head of State, General Muhammed Buhari has described the National Conference being packaged by President Goodluck Jonathan as a joker in the midst of ineptitude governance.

Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, Former Head of State and the leader of theCongress for Progressive Change (CPC)

Buhari, in his speech at a Progressive Governor’s Forum in Abuja said “amidst this ineptitude and general confusion, the government has thrown in a joker: A so-called National Conference. Now, there is nothing basically wrong in sitting down and talking about your problems. The snag is whether the conference has been conceived in good faith or not. We in APC think not. We suspect it is an attempt to muddle the waters, to befuddle the issues and to mask the failures of a clueless government.”

“Simple action on problems which have arisen has been lacking. People should reflect on major hearings in the National Assembly during the last 12 months; hearings on PHCN, hearings on Pension Funds, Hearings on NNPC. No tangible action has been taken on the outcomes of these probes. The government just hopes these problems will go away. They will not and the public will continue to demand answers and solutions,” Buhari added.

Buhari stated that the people of Nigeria wanted and deserved the simple things of life, such as security to protect them from violence and intimidation from whatever quarters; food to eat, decent shelter, schools for their children, clinics to attend to them and an environment for them to be employed and to go about their daily pursuits without hindrance, stressing that none of these existed in the required measure in Nigeria today.

According to him, “it is in the light of this desperate situation that many patriotic and thinking Nigerians decided to come together, overlook differences and forge a new movement that will rescue our country from collapse.

“Our aim is to stop the drift and slide to chaos. Our vision is to get our act together, pull the country together, select the very best and most capable people to manage our affairs and our resources so that in due course we will bring Nigeria out of conflict and poverty into peace and prosperity.”

He said the nation is undergoing a realignment, re-configuration and re-positioning of political forces, as the country was currently witnessing a landslide or a political earthquake of epic proportions, saying that while old alliances were being questioned, new alliances were being forged.

Buhari stated that Nigerians were watching with great expectations that this movement would turn the nation around, adding that “our neighbors in the West African Sub-region are anxiously watching and hoping that this may be the time when Nigeria will, at last get its act together and provide leadership and direction for the African continent. The international community is equally watching to see if this potentially sizeable security and trading partner called Nigeria can pull itself together and play its proper role in world affairs.

“These doubts and uncertainties we find ourselves in, causing everyone to scratch his and her head for solutions are as a result of extreme bad government at the centre since 1999. The Federal Government is clueless with no direction; speaking from both sides of its mouth; looking both ways at once and missing the point almost every time. This is the background and the rationale for the merger of opposition political parties. The trigger is persistent election rigging. Elections since 2003 have been massively rigged.”

Buhari is of the opinion that once “we come together, we will be strong enough to prevent election rigging. Otherwise we will be picked off piecemeal.”